The sudden ergence of augntation contracts excited the Larkinson Clan!
Not just ch designers, but also other professionals beca interested in signing such a fantastic deal. Exobiologists, engineers, ship captains, ch pilots and other people were already applying to sign this new contract!
The storm that arose from this developnt was so disruptive that Ves was forced to cease his personal experints and leave his mancave.
In order to avoid wasting too much ti on pointless argunts, he decided to discuss this problem with his two closest confidantes.
"Major Verle. Calabast. Co in and take a seat." Ves called as the two leaders entered his main office.
Once they arrived in front of Ves' desk, they took their seats.
"You cooked up quite a huge problem for us." Major Verle began.
"You moved too rashly, Ves." Calabast leaned back on her chair.
The woman patted her lap with her palm, causing Lucky to wake up from his perch on the desk.
"ow."
The gem cat flew over. When Calabast stretched one of her legs, Lucky plopped his body over her sinuous shin.
Ves called up a docunt that estimated the total cost of augntations if everyone requested a high-class implant.
"I never expected that word of this contract would spread beyond the Design Departnt. While it is incredibly expensive to sign this deal with a ch designer, our profession is very good at making money. That makes this agreent worthwhile. As long as the ch designer doesn't die in an accident or sothing, our Design Departnt will definitely earn a high return on investnt. This isn't necessarily the case in other sectors."
Major Verle sighed. "You're right. Investing 100 billion hex credits to augnt a ch designer is definitely worth it because there is the possibility of earning back multiple tis this sum. The sa cannot be said for a ch pilot. Perhaps in one battle, that pilot might die an ignominious death. That is 100 billion hex credits down the drain. Even if the ch pilot remains alive throughout his entire service, the actual benefit we get in return might not even be worth a billion credits. It makes a lot more sense to invest in a higher-performing ch. You'll get much more bang for your buck in this instance."
That was true. The fact of the matter was that the Larkison Clan simply couldn't provide so much welfare for every single clansman.
Calabast raised another object. "I don't like this contract, Ves. It has an elent of exploitation in it. Have you forgotten what I said to you? What you've introduced will only bring the Larkinson Clan closer to the Vraken Dynasty. Treating your clansn as investnts and adopting a ntality that is largely centered around profit and loss will turn the entire clan into a hypercompetitive rat race. Larkinsons will be forced to outdo each other, or else they will be unable to pay off their debt in their lifetis!"
She expressed a lot of ire. Ves realized that she had a point. While it wasn't wrong to improve the capabilities of his people, the wrong approach might do more harm than good.
"I don't want to sacrifice happiness for performance. That was never my intention." Ves quickly replied.
"Then figure sothing out."
The three of them swapped ideas with each other. They discussed several options and solutions. With the help of Calabast's personal insights, they ca up with a new and more cohesive plan.
"Augntation contracts can improve the performance of our key personnel, so we can't give them up." Ves sumd up his thoughts. "However, there is no need to extend them to the general population. It's too excessive and puts too much strain on our finances. We will establish a very strict list of occupations that are eligible for this deal. For now, that includes ch designers, naval engineers, researchers, senior officers, expert candidates, expert pilots and a bunch of other people."
These professions all played an essential role to the clan. Boosting their capabilities either improved the profitability of the LMC or increased the survivability of the Larkinson fleet.
Even if augnting certain people wouldn't actually deliver a profit to the Larkinson Clan, it was still worth it to do so for other reasons.
One of the most important principles added to the augntation contract was that it did not impose a debt on the signee!
This was one of Calabast's main demands.
"If the Larkinson Clan begins to operate like a business, your clansn will behave in a way that aligns with that. This is not conducive to the happiness of your people. A bit of competition is good, but too much of it will warp our culture."
"We can still lose a lot of money, though. The augntation contracts are bound to beco a burden to the balance sheet." Major Verle pointed out.
Calabast remained confident. "We can handle it. As long as Ves is around, we'll always be able to make more money."
It was very difficult to quantify the profits and losses with this new arrangent. Ves found it difficult to accept such a murky outco.
Still, the price was not too big.
"As long as we limit the eligibility of this contract, our clan won't have to pay too much money upfront. Our finances will be able to bear it, though our spending on other assets will definitely be affected." Ves concluded.
This was the end of the matter. After Ves introduced the added rules, the excitent throughout the clan had died down. There simply weren't enough people who were important enough to apply for this deal.
Ves knew that in the future, the burden may even be less. As long as the clan grew more prosperous, the parents might be able to use their earnings to set their children up for success. Even regular clansn might be able to earn enough Larkinson rits to obtain so decent augntations early in their lives.
Since most augntations were irreplaceable, this ant that augntation contracts lost effect to those who already improved their capabilities.
All in all, the augntation contract was tailored to poorer clansn who managed to work their way up through a combination of hard work and talent. Augnting their capabilities yielded the most drastic increase in benefits!
When Ves returned to his personal workshop, he resud one of his personal projects.
Before he was ready to prepare the Quint for another ch pilot, he had to put together a new ch for Venerable Joshua.
While Ves could have assigned Joshua to one of the clan's many existing second-class chs, this was a wasteful option.
An expert pilot was capable of unleashing much greater performance if he piloted a better ch.
It would have been best if Ves was able to deliver an expert ch to Venerable Joshua, but that was not an option in the short term.
He had no choice but to take a step back and give the expert pilot the best possible LMC ch that he had ever designed up to this point.
He actually had two ch models to choose from. The more unconventional one was fabricating another Devil Tiger to Joshua.
These days, ASMAS was no longer unaffordable to Ves. A basic batch of pure ASMAS cost as much as two to three Hexer combat carriers. Gloriana probably had to make a lot of sacrifices in order to deliver a batch to him, but that was in the past.
However, ASMAS at this price range was quite limited in performance. In fact, it couldn't even process Unending alloy! The only way to improve the capabilities of the initial batch of ASMAS was to upgrade it. This was insanely expensive, so much so that it was better for Ves to buy a more expensive brand of ASMAS right away.
Ves did not do so. No matter how much he paid, the nanomaterial he had access to simply wasn't capable of processing first-class alloys.
"Besides, the Devil Tiger is an outdated design. With my current design ability, I can design a second-class iteration that performs a lot better right out of the gate."
Even then, Ves rejected this option. The Devil Tiger was a one-off experint in his mind. Ever since his mother snatched his first masterwork ch, it belonged solely to his father.
It wasn't safe to revisit his Devil Tiger design. The risk of soone associating the original with any derivative chs was too great!
Ves had little choice but to switch his selection to one of the most powerful mobile chs he designed.
The Valkyrie Redeer and its variants imdiately ca to mind. He crossed out the base model and the regular variants. While each of them had their strong points, their overall performance was too average.
To be honest, he really wanted to build a Valkyrie Brunhild. Its production cost was around 1.6 billion credits. The Brunhild variant not only incorporated a shield generator, but also infused a modest quantity of Rorach's Bone in its fra!
The ch was incredibly suitable for Hexer expert candidates. The ch was powerful enough to protect the lives of future expert pilots, but not expensive enough to break the bank.
It was too bad that Ves lacked one of the most crucial requirents to fabricate a Valkyrie Brunhild. While it was not a problem for him to purchase the materials required to fabricate a second-class ch-grade shield generator, he didn't have any way of obtaining Rorach's Bone!
He knew that the Friday Coalition and the Hexadric Hegemony harvested a lot of Rorach's Bone during the Glowing Planet Campaign. However, both states treated it as a strategic material, so they were very careful about using it up. For now, only expert chs and other high-end chs incorporated this incredibly useful material.
Ves turned his eyes to the stepped-down version, the Valkyrie Avenger. The Avenger variant cost half as much as the Brunhild variant. It employed a cheaper and non-regenerating armor system while also leaving out the shield generator.
This was sufficient for most elite Hexer ch pilots, but Ves found it rather tasteless.
For an expert pilot like Joshua, the Valkyrie Avenger was too weak while the Valkyrie Brunhild was unattainable.
Since neither of these options were viable, Ves decided on a third solution.
He designed another variant.
In order to save ti, Ves did not design a proper variant. Instead, he used the Valkyrie Brunhild as a base and stripped it of every elent that Ves wasn't able to deliver. He replaced the entire armor system with one based entirely out of Unending alloy.
Even though Ves wanted to save up this precious material for Venerable Joshua's actual expert ch, it was not a big deal to make use of it straight away. He could always recycle the Unending alloy at a later date.
While Unending alloy possessed different properties than the mix of alloys employed by the armor system of the Brunhild, it was not very troubleso to perform a direct replacent.
"Bygul, please optimize the armor plating layout of the rear leg sections of this design." Ves commanded.
[Optimizing now. This process will take an estimated ti of 5 minutes and 32 seconds.] The electronic cat dutifully said in his clipped voice.
Ves smirked. With the imnse processing power of the ASTERA AI core at his disposal, this kind of work no longer took hours or days to complete.
If he wanted to, he could customize his new Valkyrie ch even further. While that was an attractive prospect, it took too much ti to tailor the ch to Venerable Joshua.
Ves didn't want to spend weeks or months on what was supposed to be a temporary stopgap solution until Venerable Joshua obtained a proper expert ch.
There was another reason why he didn't want to design a custom ch. He wanted to pass on the ch to an expert candidate once Venerable Joshua moved on to an expert ch. The Valkyrie ch had to be universal enough to accommodate other ch pilots.
"Besides, if I want to customize the ch even further for a specific ch pilot, I'll have to bring in Gloriana."
That was not conducive to this little experint!
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